The Gristle & Bone Series (Book 1): The Flayed & The Dying

by Roach, Aaron

  Where are the shakes?

  “What?” asked Gabe. But Little Brother merely looked at him, wagging his tail. Gabe squinted suspiciously at Little Brother before raising his hand up to his face. He turned it back and forth and observed no twitching – no movement, no spasms. He looked down at his arms and legs – nothing.

  No shakes.

  Go kill Lou.

  Gabe rounded on the dog, who yipped and tilted his head so that one ear flopped to the side.

  Kill Lou.

  “Okay,” said Gabe after a long pause. The dog never broke eye contact with him. “I’ll kill Lou.”

  Gabe picked up his gun once more and stood to leave the shelter of the watchtower. As he stepped out into the pouring rain, he stopped to view the bodies of his wife and daughter, then looked down at Little Brother, who was prancing around his feet.

  “I have to say goodbye first.”

  Little brother simply wagged his tail.

  Gabe knelt and arranged the bodies so that Molly and Riley were lying next to each other, hand in hand. When he was done, he whispered into their ears, telling them he loved them. I’ll lay you next to Jacob when it’s done. He planted a kiss on each forehead, and then followed Little Brother down the hill.

  Kill Lou! Kill Lou!

  Gabe chose a spot just above and behind the mouth of the cave, where he could look down onto the concrete barriers and have a clear shot of anyone exiting. He lay down on the rocky ledge and rested the butt of his rifle against his shoulder. He breathed through his nose, forcing his mind away from the cold and wet, and thought of his wife on their wedding day.

  On the day Jacob had been born.

  And on Riley, sweet Riley, smiling back at him through his truck’s rearview mirror.

  Overhead, the rain fell heavier, and the wind lashed. Incoming lightning crackled and the sky grumbled angrily at having been woken. Gabe braced himself for a long night ahead. Next to him Little Brother nuzzled into his armpit, taking shelter from the rain, and dozed off.

  The pup’s warmth radiated into Gabe like a fire.

  -79-

  When the rain finally stopped, night had fallen.

  Litz was in the shelter of one of the dozens of watchtowers posted around the camp’s perimeter, watching as the last of the rain dribbled from the watchtower’s roof. It caught the moonlight before continuing its fall to the ground below. Next to him, Lowell took a long drag from his cigarette, giving the darkness around his face an eerie orange glow, before flicking the butt out into the clearing that separated the fenceline from the woods. Litz watched it fall like a shooting star.

  “This is pointless,” said Lowell.

  “What’s pointless?” asked Litz, trying to keep the exasperation from his voice. Lowell was a complainer, and Litz found his negativity exhausting.

  “Us, being out here in the rain, watching the woods.” Lowell said, pointing out into the darkness towards the trees. “There are only trees out there, Litz. Other than the groaners we saw at the killer’s weird lair, there hasn’t been a sighting of the dead in almost two weeks. What are we doing up here?”

  “Our jobs, Lowell. Our jobs.”

  Litz was getting tired of his fellow soldiers in the camp trying to shirk their duties, especially after all the flack he and Ward had received when they first arrived. He sighed, thinking about how he couldn’t wait to get out of the camp for good, back to soldiering with real soldiers. The push west would be just what he needed. No more of this waiting around a camp, babysitting a bunch of civilians, while the real fighting happened out there, across the rest of the country. He tried not to think about Sophia and Kat.

  They’ll be fine with Ward.

  “Yeah, well, I heard that some of the female civilians in the northeastern sector have set up jobs of their own, offering goods and services for things like cigarettes and booze.” Lowell said with a wink before pulling out an unopened pack of cigarettes from his breast pocket. He held it up for Litz to see. “And I think it’s about time for me to quit smoking.” He turned and began making his way down the ladder, pausing briefly to look up at Litz. “You coming?”

  Litz didn’t reply, simply staring after the man as he reached the ground and began making his way towards a cluster of housing units in the distance.

  Alone, Litz looked out onto the camp. It was dark, and he could hear the relieved chatter of people leaving their bunkhouses to breathe in the fresh air. As terrifying as rainfall now was, the general mood of the camp always seemed to be alleviated afterwards. He supposed it came from the knowledge that though the rain had come and gone, they had survived. As if to confirm his theory, fires began winking into existence and he could smell wood smoke and cooking in the air. There was laughter, and somebody somewhere was playing music. He smiled. Tomorrow the fights would resume and so would the calls for more food. They may even find a new body, a victim of the unknown killer. But for now, the camp was at peace. Cleansed.

  A coyote howled somewhere in the woods. He turned in the direction of the noise, listening for the creature again, when his eyes registered something that hadn’t been there before. Beyond the clearing, along the canopy of leaves, he saw the white glint of moonlight being reflected back at him. And down on the ground, standing at the edge of the forest, he saw pale figures. His heart dropped, and he reached for the tower’s spotlight, flashing the thing on and swiveling it to aim at the woods. The circle of light illuminated thousands of the dead. Skeletals sat motionless in tree branches while on the ground below them, an army of groaners stretched as far as the light could reach. Just like in Boston, the groaners simply stared, their faces hung open in silent screams.

  “Oh shit!”

  Litz scrambled to hit the switch that sounded alarms across the camp. All along the fenceline, watchtowers spewed lights at the forest and illuminated the dead surrounding them. At the sound of the alarms and the sight of lights dancing across the trees, the camp’s civilian population began to panic. The jovial mood of moments before disintegrated into screaming and chaos.

  The watchers in the towers to the left and right of Litz began firing, the thunder of .50 caliber machine guns filling the air.

  Almost as one, with their gazes never wavering from the camp, the thousands of groaners on the ground suddenly sidestepped, disappearing behind tree trunks in one motion. Above them, all along the forest canopy, the skeletals slunk back into the heavy foliage, swallowed by the night.

  The wall of bullets struck nothing.

  The machine gun bursts from the watchtowers continued for several more seconds, chewing up bark and leaves. Eventually the firing stilled to silence and calls to reload were shouted down the line. In that brief intervention, the dead sidestepped out from the cover of the trees once more, revealing themselves and taunting the shooters with their unflinching gazes. This time though, they began to moan, the sounds of so many thousands of them sounding like a growing earthquake.

  It was Boston all over again, and Litz knew what would happen next. He gripped the handles of his own .50 caliber machine gun, depressed the butterfly trigger with both thumbs, and let the bullets fly.

  Almost on cue, the skeletals launched themselves from the forest canopy, leaving their groaner underlings behind in the woods. As soon as they hit the earth, they sprinted towards the fence, pouncing from side to side and zigzagging to avoid the onslaught of gunfire that rained down at them. They threw themselves at the camp perimeter, scrambling up the fence and over the barbed wire at the top in seconds.

  Litz could hear the soldiers in the other watchtowers panicking as they tried to track the unearthly movement of the skeletals with their guns. Then suddenly there was screaming in the watchtower to Litz’s left and he turned to see the bastards swarming over the men there, stabbing and skewering with their spiked ribs and arms.

  “You bastards!” Litz shouted, swiveling his machine gun towards the tower. Confined in the small space and nowhere to run, the skeletals died there with their victim
s, blown to pieces by the gun’s massive bullets. Litz brought the weapon swinging back to his right and continued firing, only taking his thumbs from the trigger when the gun clicked empty. As he moved to reload, the groaners in the forest suddenly broke into a run, trailing after the skeletals. Rank upon rank, they emerged from the trees, their dead-eyed, openmouthed expressions never leaving their faces. Their movement was awkward, ambling and stiff, with their arms held down at their sides as they advanced across the clearing, moaning all the time. Like a crashing wave, they slammed against the perimeter, the force of so many bodies bending the fence inwards.

  Litz directed his reloaded weapon at the horde gathering below his section of wire. He pushed his thumbs against the trigger and watched the groaners’ heads pop like pimples under the gunfire. Several dozens of them fell dead, only to be replaced by a hundred more when he went to reload again.

  He was running out of ammo.

  Fuck!

  Down below, the fence groaned from the weight of so many bodies pushing against it.

  It was time to go.

  Litz abandoned the .50 cal and grabbed his M16 before turning to descend the ladder. As he reached the ground, a skeletal dropped from the barbed wire above to land next to him and he was forced to throw himself into a forward roll as the thing gave chase, stabbing at the ground in his wake. He came upright into a sitting position and turned in time to unload his weapon into the creature’s snarling face. It died as he scrambled to his feet. He slammed another magazine into the rifle and started retreating towards the screaming people at the center of the camp.

  -80-

  When the rain stopped, Kat and Sophia stepped outside with the rest of their bunkmates. They’d been confined inside for hours, bored while they waited for the deluge to cease, and when it finally did, they relished the opportunity to take in the fresh air. Though it was well past sunset, the world was still visible, illuminated by the dim light of the full moon overhead. They looked up to see the stars shining clearly above them, while the silhouettes of rainclouds moved away to join a growing storm in the distance, heading in the opposite direction.

  Now that the rain had stopped, it was turning into a beautiful night.

  “What’s that?” Sophia asked, pointing at a lone light emanating from one of the watchtowers in the distance. The light moved across the trees for several seconds before it stopped, finding focus on an army of human corpses gathering in the woods. “Oh no…”

  Even as she said it, the spotlight was joined by many more and the night air filled with the sounds of wailing sirens. Panic erupted. Everywhere, people began to run, tripping over each other in their haste to put distance between themselves and the fences. Before Kat could grab Sophia’s hand, they found themselves caught up in a river of running bodies which pushed and shoved to get by. The crowd ran between them and they were forced away from each other. Kat shouted out to her, but Sophia’s small size meant she was quickly lost from sight in the stampeding throng.

  “Sophia!” Kat shouted, but the cacophony of gunfire, sirens and screaming drowned her out. “Sophia!” She pushed her way through the panic towards where she last saw the girl when she sensed a presence come up from behind. Before she could turn to see what it was, a blow to her head made her vision go dark.

  -81-

  Sharpe wished them luck as they walked past him into the dark hallway.

  “We’ll wait for you at the ducky,” Maldonado whispered from the darkness.

  Sharpe’s silhouette, framed by the doorway, shook its head. “Get what you need and go,” he ordered. “Don’t wait for me.” He shut the door on them before they could argue.

  A few seconds later, from somewhere above, they heard Sharpe roar, followed by howling and the thunder of gunfire. They took heart in the fact that the gunfire didn’t stop abruptly, but rather faded as Sharpe moved outside and farther away from them.

  “Come on,” Maldonado said, flicking on his scope’s night vision and walking ahead of them. “Let’s get this done.”

  They moved in silence until they came upon another door at the end of the passage.

  “This goes up to the detention center?” Maldonado asked.

  Francesca nodded.

  Maldonado placed his ear against the door’s surface. From the other side he could detect a single, solitary moan. “We’re not alone,” he said quietly. “I’ll go up first. You two stay here. Wait for my signal.” He reached down and removed the blade sheathed at his ankle, turned the doorknob, and cracked the door open.

  On the other side were stairs which Maldonado ascended slowly, quietly. When his head was level with the ground floor he paused and looked around. The room was full of toppled chairs, overturned desks, and cells with metal bars. Inside some of the cells were the desiccated corpses of detainees who must have been trapped when the dead took over the facility. They had died awfully, of thirst or hunger. To his right, he heard moaning and soft footsteps. He turned to see a groaner standing a few feet away, its back turned to him. It was a male in a bloodied lab coat, staring at the ceiling as it called out its death rattles.

  Maldonado moved to come up behind the thing, but he froze as the sound of gunfire erupted from somewhere outside. At the noise, the thing whipped its head around and began shuffling towards the room’s exit, its arms reaching. As it made its way unseeing past the steps, Maldonado slammed the blade of his knife into the base of the thing’s skull. It collapsed to the floor and twitched for a few moments before it died. Once it stilled, the operator let out a low whistle, signaling the others to join him.

  “Where to next, Doc?” he asked.

  Francesca nodded her head outside. “Out there, over to the building on the right, then down the hall.”

  Nearby, Thaniel peeked through the blinds of one of the windows. “Holy shit,” he said, “Sharpe is actually doing it.”

  Maldonado came over to look for himself. Outside, close to a large warehouse-sized building in the distance, he made out the running form of his friend, a trail of bodies lying face-first and unmoving in the snow in his wake.

  Francesca peered over their shoulders. “That’s the lab,” she said as Sharpe reached the entrance. “I can’t believe he’s going to make it.”

  “Come on,” Maldonado responded with a smile. “We can’t let him show us up. Let’s do what we came here to do.”

  They stepped out of the detention center, rifles raised and ready, and made their way to the right towards the building that housed Neyra’s office. As they approached the low structure, Francesca looked to where she knew Neyra’s office was located. For some reason, the window there was open. “Hey!” she said in a stage whisper, pointing to it. “It’s through there.”

  Maldonado took the lead and reached the window first. He stuck his head and rifle inside, checking the corners.

  “Clear,” he said. “Briends, you’re first.” He bent low into a squat and clasped his hands together for Thaniel to step onto. Maldonado heaved him up and he disappeared through the space. “Come on, Doc,” he said. “You’re next.”

  Inside, the room was frigid, and Francesca and Thaniel could feel the frozen fibers of the carpet crinkling beneath their feet with each step.

  Outside, Maldonado kept watch.

  Francesca made her way to a large filing cabinet which dominated the side wall. She yanked on drawers that wouldn’t budge. “They’re locked,” she said. “See if you can find a key.”

  Thaniel set to looking around Neyra’s desk when something caught his eye. Atop the desk, between the phone and a partially emptied mug of coffee, was an open newspaper he immediately recognized.

  The New England Times.

  It was a weeks-old issue and was turned over to page two. There, printed beneath an article he had written a lifetime ago, was his name ringed by a coffee-stain. He squinted at his name, trying to understand the possible significance of the paper’s presence, when something clicked in his mind and imagined events began to fall into place
.

  Thaniel imagined the ghost of a faceless Neyra in the room with them, sitting at the desk. The specter read the newspaper, trying to ignore the rising anger at the revelation that his project, his life’s work, had been ordered to be shut down by Command. The specter took a sip of coffee and looked down to see Thaniel’s name ringed by the stain left by the mug.

  Why not? The specter thought, before picking up the phone and dialing the paper’s number.

  As the specter faded, anger and disbelief mixed like bile in Thaniel’s hollow stomach. Ever since Harig had questioned him aboard the Defiant, had asked him why Neyra had called him, chosen him specifically; Thaniel had wracked his mind for an answer.

  Now, it seemed, he had it.

  Just because.

  The events that comprised Thaniel’s life in the days and weeks since that phone call, from the drunken one-night stand with Celia, to his friends’ deaths, to his being there in the Arctic, and everything in-between, had all stemmed from the fact that the bastard had simply picked up his coffee mug and seen Thaniel’s name ringed in the paper.

  That’s how his fate had been chosen.

  A spur of the moment decision.

  Just because.

  “You find anything yet, Thaniel?” Francesca asked from near the cabinet before turning to look at him. “Hey, is everything okay? You don’t look so good.”

  Thaniel tried to swallow his growing bitterness. “Yeah. Give me a second.” He yanked open the topmost desk drawer and tossed its contents to the floor, spilling pens and thumbtacks. No key. He pulled out another drawer, full of individual papers and stuffed folders. He dumped those into his pack before tossing the empty drawer to the ground. No key. He pulled out drawer after drawer, angrily spilling their contents either into the pack or onto the ground. No key.

  “Fuck!” he yelled angrily as he emptied the last drawer.

  Francesca watched him, a worried expression growing on her face. “What’s going on, Thaniel?” she asked with more than a little fear in her voice.